For the last 20 years, abortion has been a major focus in Matt Bowman’s life. But he has not been on the side of protecting abortion access and reproductive justice. Between 1996 and 2001, Bowman had at least 14 different run-ins with law enforcement, mainly for protests outside of abortion clinics and homes where he targeted clinic workers, security guards, and patients. Mother Jones reports that Bowman is a staunch anti-abortion activist who, in the past, could be found outside of clinics sometimes blocking people’s “attempts to receive or provide constitutionally protected reproductive health care.”
In 2019, Bowman has moved on from protests. Instead, he’s blocking access to abortions using the law, and has been fairly successful at it. In his career as a lawyer, he’s clerked in the past for a future Supreme Court justice (Samuel Alito), he’s gone to federal court to argue anti-abortion cases, and now he’s a member of the Trump administration, serving as deputy counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
All of this means that Bowman has been positioned well to impact the constitutionally protected right to privacy established in Roe v. Wade. Bowman has been busy at HHS working to implement rules that weaken the contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act. He also served as an adviser on the Garza v. Azar case, a challenge to policies that restrict detained migrant girls from receiving abortion care.
According to records obtained under litigation by the pro-choice nonprofit Equity Forward, Bowman gave extensive legal advice to the embattled architect of those policies, former Office of Refugee Resettlement Director Scott Lloyd, as he attempted to block at least seven unnamed girls, including a rape victim, from seeking abortions and made frequent personal interventions encouraging girls in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody to give birth.
By all accounts, Bowman is not a good guy. He’s unnaturally obsessed with abortion and preventing women from having them. But his history of activism around abortion issues demonstrates the kind of person he is. He was part of some of the most extreme anti-abortion groups in the country and was very much affiliated with the culture of the pro-life zealots who terrorized, stalked, and even murdered abortion doctors.
It all began when Bowman was a college student at the University of Dayton, a Catholic university. He was a member of Students for Life and became radicalized soon after, leading anti-abortion protests and attending events with a group called Collegians Activated to Liberate Life (CALL). Mother Jones reports that CALL was “a group that organized weekends of anti-abortion action in Midwestern cities, where some members would distribute graphic leaflets, stage clinic sit-ins, and glue clinic doors shut.” With CALL, Bowman took his zealotry to Russia in order to help spread the “gospel of life.”
Upon graduation, Bowman launched CALL’s newsletter, in which he urged other activists to engage in direct action to save fetuses. He encouraged them to get radical and risk lawsuits and jail time, all for the “pro-life struggle.” He was so frighteningly delusional that he thought of their efforts as freedom fighting.
He compared their efforts to those of German families who hid Jews during the Holocaust or students who fought for racial equity during the civil rights movement. “Are we not heir to their place in society, and facing a much greater injustice?” Bowman asked.
But here’s the rub. On the résumé that he submitted for the job at HHS, Bowman conveniently left off his years as pro-life terrorist. He failed to include his work with extremist organizations, instead choosing to list his work simply as “full-time pro-life volunteer” for three years. Those are also the years that he ran into trouble with the police. His tactics became increasingly threatening as time went on, following women who were patients at the Packard Women’s Clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, recording their arrivals on camera and stalking them in the parking lot. He also began regularly recording the license plate numbers of employees and following one nurse at the clinic, calling her a murderer and telling her that she was going to hell. She became so scared of him that she started having a manager escort her to and from work.
After graduating from law school, Bowman had a series of federal judicial clerkships and then joined a conservative Christian advocacy organization. From there, he began to move his anti-abortion fights through the courts. And he’s not just been focused on Wisconsin, but has also fought legal battles in Massachusetts and nationwide. And now he’s at it with the Trump administration, one of the greatest threats to reproductive justice and abortion rights in decades. How fitting that this administration is fully comfortable hiring a criminal and terrorist with a long legal record. And though it seems that Bowman is no longer an active participant in anti-abortion protests, he retains his ties to his buddies from that world.
Make no mistake: Matt Bowman is absolutely dangerous. He has a two-decade-long history of trying to keep women from their lawful right to have an abortion, while also stalking, harassing, and engaging in illegal activity, all in the name of religion. He’s also a liar, choosing conveniently not to disclose his past during vetting for a federal job. This kind of zealot belongs in jail and should never be placed in any position to impact the lives of women. And yet, he occupies a top legal position in this presidential administration. This is an outrage. And sadly, it’s also just par for the course with this White House. 2020 can’t come soon enough. Women’s health, well-being, and very lives depend on removing Trump and everyone associated with him from our government.